Discoveries while searching for the complete Unst Family Tree

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Tracking unusual middle names

When working on a family tree for an area, you soon become familiar with the names in use, and then it becomes very obvious when a name is used that looks out of place. It is highly unlikely that this name has just been made up, and 100 years ago they didn’t have the same level of media reporting to provide endless supplies of odd sounding names from celebrities, so it must have come from someone living locally. Finding the source of this name can tell you some more about the people in question, albeit sometimes less tangible things, but aren’t those the most interesting things to learn?

Of course, sometimes it can tell you very tangible things, as in this example. The birth record for a child born in 1905, who I’d known as Oliver D Peterson from the census returns, showed me his full name was Oliver Dryer Peterson. Oliver in itself was not a common name on the island of Unst, and Dryer even less so. However, searching for his name in my online tree in order to attach the birth record to it, I noticed there were two other Oliver Dryers; there had to be a connection.

The other two were father and son, and the father was the minister of the local church in Uyeasound, according to the 1911 census. In 1901 however, he was in Lanarkshire at a different church. Naming your son after the local minister certainly did happen especially by a church going family, as we can perhaps now assume this family were (although since many were, this intangible information is perhaps not all that interesting). Choosing an unrelated name was especially true when you’ve already had enough children to have used up the usual naming “rules” of using the grandparents names. This was certainly the case here as Oliver Peterson was the 12th child of 13. Now, here’s where it gets tangible; what it also tells us is that the minister, Oliver Dryer, must have moved to Unst before Oliver Peterson was born in 1905, or the family could not have known that name to copy.

So, it’s always worth following up even the smallest details, as you never know where it may lead. I find these connections between otherwise unrelated people quite fascinating, so I hope to write a few more posts on these sorts of things.